


Sunlight on Broken Glass

by Bazylia_de_Grean



Series: Light, Smoke and Mirrors [4]
Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 18:00:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12018108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bazylia_de_Grean/pseuds/Bazylia_de_Grean
Summary: Gabrielle turns away from the window, tears blurring her vision. She didn’t even have to pretend she was crying. “Was it all necessary, Marten? He knows, and now everything…” Everything will come to an end. Her family and her love and everything she holds dear. (All things end, Gabrielle.)





	1. Chapter 1

Her cheek tingles with magic when he touches it, and the bruise vanishes before it even appeared. Would have been hard to make it any more convincing.

Gabrielle turns away from the window, tears blurring her vision. She didn’t even have to pretend she was crying. “Was it all necessary, Marten? He knows, and now everything…” Everything will come to an end. Her family and her love and everything she holds dear. (All things end, Gabrielle.)

He doesn’t shush her. She’s not a child but a grown woman, and that’s why he explains instead.

“Dark times are coming. If you son doesn’t become a man, he will die. You know that.”

“Yes. You’ve told me before.” A cold shiver runs down her spine, even though she doesn’t sense a lie in his words. Or maybe _because_ she doesn’t. Maybe it’s not a shiver but the passing moments, a countdown to Gilead’s fall. “I just wish…” She stifles a sob. “I just wish he didn’t have to grow up so fast.” She looks up at her lover. “And what about us?” she asks quietly.

“I have to go. But I will come back for you.”

“He will have me hanged,” Gabrielle whispers. “For treason.” Fear grips her suddenly, and every breath becomes an effort. “Steven will…”

“He won’t. Because he would have to admit you had another. That he failed in his duties as a husband. Steven of Gilead would never dishonor himself that way.”

He would not dishonor himself… What about me, Gabrielle wonders, have I dishonored myself? (He dishonored you first.)

“Take me with you.” She’s pleading now. “Please, Marten.” Once, those were the magic words that made him do her bidding, the only spell at her disposal.

He shakes his head. “I can’t.” He kneels beside her and takes her hands in his, runs his thumbs across her skin in soothing circles. “There’s no hope for Gilead. But there is hope for you yet. And your son. For a price.”

Her eyes flutter close. “It will be terrible, won’t it? The price.” She smiles, but there’s no mirth in it, only pain. “It’s always like that in fairy tales.”

“It’s worse in life,” Marten answers harshly. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “I don’t know the price yet. But it’s always worse in life.” He calmly meets her terrified, questioning stare. “How much are you willing to do to save your son, Gabrielle?” he asks, watching her. “How much are you willing to sacrifice?”

She sighs, eyes closing tightly shut. “Everything. You know that.”

“Maybe it won’t come to that, my love. If I hurry.” His lips brush her temple. “I will come back for you.” One moment he is kissing her deeply – honey and poison and the sickly sweetness of decaying flowers – and the next he is gone, leaving her with hands clutching at empty air and the smell of roses.

* * *

 

Steven is not angry, at least not with her. He’s disappointed. It’s much worse. It mean he doesn’t care enough to feel enraged.

“I’ve known for two years,” he says in a calm, detached voice. “Is that all of it, Gabrielle?”

It’s now even the beginning. She wants to explain, but it’s too late, too late.

“Or was it earlier? That’s what your questions were about? If I was still interested, or if you were free to find someone else to warm your bed? That’s what it was, my lady wife?”

Her hands are trembling.

“I was trying to be considerate.” He shakes his head. “To make you feel comfortable…”

“I just wanted to feel loved!” she cries, interrupting him. She’s never interrupted him before.

His face twists, but it’s so brief she can’t say whether it’s pain or disgust.

“I would ask you if he made you feel that way… But I was taught there are things a man should not ask.”

She looks at him through tears of anguish and despair and pent up anger. Two years? He knows nothing. “You should have asked four years ago,” she says quietly, but her stare is defiant.

Steven’s features freeze in shock. Four, he mouths, but no sound comes out. Then he turns away from her, putting both hands on his desk and leaning against it heavily.

“You will go to Debaria.”

“What?”

Slowly, he straightens and looks at her again. His eyes are like empty barrels of his guns.

“You will go to Debaria.”

“Don’t you at least have the courage to judge me?” Her words are poison and she knows it. Poison she’s drunk from Marten’s mouth.

“I refuse to dishonor us further. Perhaps one day you’ll understand.”

She lets the tears spill onto her cheeks. It doesn’t matter, because he cannot see. He never saw her.

“Perhaps one day you’ll understand, too, husband,” she replies.

His eyes narrow. “Would you rather I charged you with treason? You and your lover? Do you know he fled? Do you know he left you alone, Gabrielle?”

She shakes her head. Her answer, when she gives it, is very soft; it’s the tone she used to talk to him when they woke together in the first few mornings of their marriage. “I’ve always been alone.”

* * *

 

Debaria isn’t a dark place. But there’s a shadow falling over the land, and Gabrielle carries her own darkness within her thoughts. Neither her husband nor her son try to contact her. She attempts to write to Roland a few times, but she’s exhausted and plagued by nightmares of what might come, and she throws all the letters away. Forgive me, son, Gabrielle thinks, forgive me.

In the end she chose him over herself, and maybe that will count. Somehow. Somewhere. For him, if not for her. She doesn’t have any hope left for herself.

* * *

 

When the time comes to formally confess her sins before her return – has her husband forgiven her? – she can’t tell what is it she regrets. Their lost marriage? Falling for Marten? Or the choices she had to make just before she left?

The friar who comes to hear her confession seems strange… Or perhaps strangely familiar? But the world is moving on again, so is it that surprising everything is slowly becoming odd?

She just shrugs and kneels – there is no dignity left for her, none whatsoever, but she no longer minds. And then she talks. He will judge her at the end, but at least he’s willing to listen. That’s more than she got from her own husband.

“That man… Did you love him?” the stranger asks at last, when she’s finished talking.

“I thought I did.” She keeps staring at the floor. “But how would I know?”

I love my son, Gabrielle thinks. This is the only truth she is certain of. This is the only truth she will give everything to preserve. This is the only revelation those months of seclusion have brought her – something she has already known. Why else would she have agreed to hurt her son, if not to save him? She loves Roland. This is the truth.

But other kinds of love, the love between a woman and a man? She has known curiosity and kindness, tenderness even, wonder and yearning and passion, and despair, but how should she know which one of those love is, if any? How should she know if she’s ever loved her husband or her lover? (How else would you know heartbreak?)

“Marten?!” she gasps, head snapping up.

He pulls the hood back from his face. “I’ve told you I would come.” His hands grasp hers as he helps her get up.

She clings to him, hides her face against his neck to smell the familiar scent of smoke and thunder and dead roses. It doesn’t matter whether she loves him or her husband, or neither, or maybe both. Because right now he is here and she isn’t lonely.

* * *

 

“There is hope yet, Gabrielle. Magic I can weave to protect you…”

“My son,” she interrupts. “What about Roland?” She knows that he had never been friends with her son, and then Roland proclaimed them enemies, but he will save her child if she asks. She looks up at him, pleading. “Please, Marten.”

“Him too.” Marten’s eyes are dark silk shrouds and a warning. “The price is Maerlyn’s crystal. And your husband’s life.”

She takes a step back, shivering. Not shocked. Somehow, deep inside, she guessed that long ago. Back in her room, the last time they talked before his disappearance and her departure.

“Why would you ask that of me?” she asks faintly. “Why me?”

“Because only you can get close enough to do this.” Marten takes her by the shoulders and looks into her face. “How much are you willing to sacrifice to save your son, Gabrielle? Is the answer still everything, now that you know the question?”

His eyes are starless sky and incoming darkness. It’s treason. It’s double betrayal. But if it’s the only chance to save her son, she will take it.

“Yes,” she whispers, closing her eyes. Her word turns into a gust of wind and she can hear the rustle of leaves, repeating her answer, yes-yes-yes, over and over. It is done. Whatever she did, it is done.

Gabrielle stumbles forward, short of breath. Marten catches her.

“It’s true, then, what people say?” she whispers, in a tone that needs no confirmation. “You are Farson’s man now?”

“As much as he’s mine.”

That shocks her. “What… How… Why?”

“The world’s moving on, Gabrielle.” He grasps her shoulders. “We can either move with it or perish.”

“But…” She closes her eyes, trembling. “My son… My son…”

“Your son is a man now,” Marten reminds her. “He can take _ka_ in his own hands.”

“We can’t shape fate.”

“But we can shape ourselves to fit it.”

* * *

 

That night, they settle for the night under a canopy of clouds and trees, on a mattress of grass and dry leaves that rustle like sheets. Marten grimaces at the sound, waves his hand and the earth blooms into a bed of roses, white like her skin and pink like her blush. And a single red one which he takes out of yet another book and brings it to life with a kiss, only to crush it in his hand and throw the petals across the ground. They look like drops of blood among all the pastels.

Gabrielle watches, mesmerized and scared, chilled to the bone and shivering in fever. “Is this my future?” she asks quietly. “Is that why you never wanted to draw cards for me, Marten?”

“Future is a choice,” he answers cryptically. Bows his head to look down at the patterns the falling petals created.

“I made my choice,” she says, in a small voice.

“Yes.” He looks at her, coils a strand of her hair around his fingers. “But there are also other choices. Your husband’s. Your son’s.” He pauses, slowly draws her close. “Mine.”

She tilts her head, gesturing towards the flowers. “Is this your choice, Marten?” She looks into his eyes. Up close, they are smoke and mirrors. “To shatter me into pieces and throw me away?”

“It’s my choice to shatter your heart to give you a chance at life.”

“It’s selfish,” she mutters when he leans in to kiss her neck. “It’s cruel.”

“I’ve never claimed I was a good man.”

He pulls her down onto the bed of roses. Maybe he is good for her, despite all. Maybe still better than loneliness. (There are worse things than loneliness, Gabrielle. Far worse.)

We will regret it later, Gabrielle thinks, we will regret it all. (We will, love. Later. Later.) Later… Too soon. Too soon... (Perhaps. Probably. Let’s make it worth regrets.)

* * *

 

“Who are you, Marten?”

“Do you really wish to know?”

“Did I wish to know what you’ve told me so far? That the price for my son’s safety will be my husband’s death? Did I wish to know it will be by my own hand? Did I wish to love you, instead of my husband? When have my wishes ever meant anything?”

“Nothing I can say will convince you otherwise, will it?”

“Who are you, Marten? Who are you really?”

“A man.” (A man, despite all.)


	2. Chapter 2

When she returns to Gilead, her husband greets her like a polite stranger and her son is nowhere to be seen. And when she enters her chambers, there are crumpled rose petals on her sheets, over the imprint of two entwined bodies. And the sickly sweet smell of decay.

Future is a choice, Gabrielle thinks, looking at her reflection in the mirror as she adjusts her hair. She chooses her son and slips the poisoned knife into the folds of her gown.

* * *

 

Steven dances with her. For a moment she forgets everything and for a moment it seems it’s their wedding night. And when she asks for his pardon, he gives it.

Forgive me, Steven, Gabrielle thinks, for making you believe I apologized for unfaithfulness. What she is really sorry about are Marten’s words in her ear and the knife in the folds of her gown.

She asks Steven to take her back, to let her be his wife again. She asks him to take her to his bed. He agrees.

They make love like they did on their wedding night, except this time Gabrielle is crying. Steven shushes her, promises they will get through this. Professes his love.

I cry your pardon, Steven, Gabrielle screams inwardly as she smiles up at her husband through the veil of tears. It’s too late, too late. Too many regrets.

Why didn’t you listen, husband, she thinks as he falls asleep by her side, embracing her.

Why didn’t she try harder. Why didn’t she love her husband enough. Why did she let Marten make her fall in love with him. Why did she let herself.

Why, why, why… Yes-yes-yes, the rustle of leaves echoes in her mind, yes-yes-yes.

No.

Future is a choice, Gabrielle thinks, looking at the sleeping form of her husband. And she cannot choose. Is it love? Fear? Both? No matter. What will come, will come. _Ka_. If Steven is supposed to die, there will be another knife and another hand to guide it.

She slips out of bed, finds the dark bundle of material the crystal is wrapped in. Forgive me, Steven, she whispers soundlessly into the night. She’s doing it for their son. It’s selfish and it’s cruel, but Roland’s life is worth more to her than the whole of Gilead, than anything in the world, than the world itself. It is what her husband would want, too, if he knew. To save their son.

I tried to be faithful, Gabrielle thinks. She failed, just like she had before. But she will be faithful in this and save their child.

He’d known for two years, but he’d never said anything. Is that because he’s of the proud line of descendants of Arthur Eld, the line that had begun from a child born out of wedlock? Is that why her husband had kept silent, because he is a man who takes yes for yes and no for no, but his own history and marriage were both?

* * *

 

Forgive me, Roland, Gabrielle thinks as she hears her son’s footsteps, forgive me. She made a wrong choice. Perhaps more than once. Perhaps it was one choice that brought it all. Perhaps it was just her _ka_. She’s not expecting him to forgive her. Hoping, maybe. She just wants a chance to ask for his pardon.

Roland calls out to her, looking around the chamber. That is when she notices his guns. That is when it dawns on her.

Marten warned her. Future is a choice. He chose the wrong words, and she didn’t understand. Not until now.

Roland turns. (Your son is a man now. He can take _ka_ in his own hands.)


End file.
